A blog about software delivery, Agile & DevOps by Mirco Hering

Definitions

As I keep publishing blog posts I think it is handy to have a reference page for definitions that I will use. A lot of terms are not necessarily clear in their usage in the industry or on the web, so here are the ones that I use. I don’t claim these to be the correct ones, but when you read my blog posts and come across these terms, that definition here is what I have in mind.

Agile (in the context of Agile software delivery)
A set of adaptive methods to deliver software based solutions based on the Agile Manifesto. It is an umbrella term for delivery methods like SCRUM and Kanban and for engineering methods like XP. From a cultural perspective these methods are meant to bring the customer or business stakeholder closer to the IT organisation through closer collaboration and by making delivery less black box and more white box.

Design Thinking
This is the process of identifying and defining what a solution should look like by emphasizing with the subjects in question, by creatively solving the problem at hand and by analytically testing whether or not the solution is feasible from a technical perspective and in the problem context (viable for the customer and the business).

DevOps
I personally like the following definition:“Using governance and automation techniques to optimise collaboration across development and operations to enable faster, more predictable and more frequent deployments to market”.From a cultural perspective this is bringing down the barriers between the development and operations parts of the organisation to achieve the right balance between stability or reliability and the required changes to deliver to the end-customer.